Mauro Ranallo invades the blogosphere

Hide the woman and children (and no, I’m not referring to the picture, but they might want to find a new one): Mauro Ranallo has invaded the blogosphere.

I’ll give full disclosure in that I’ve been a Ranallo fan for quite some time. I realize he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I believe the addition of his blog to The Fight Network web site is a huge upgrade.

DREAM held its third event on Sunday May 11th and it featured a fight of the year candidate in the second round of the Lightweight Grand Prix as Eddie Alvarez defeated Joachim Hansen in a thrilling battle that went the distance. I think Alvarez has all the tools to carry a promotion and it would behoove ELITE XC to maximize his marketing potential.

It looks like I wasn’t the only one who felt HDNet should have handled their commentary assignments for DREAM differently last week:

A lot has been written about HDNet’s coverage of Dream 3. I think in hindsight, having Kenny Rice and Bas Rutten do the commentary in a Los Angeles studio over the live feed from Japan was a mistake. Mark Cuban has very deep pockets. He should have sent the crew to Japan earlier in the week to properly prepare and deliver the broadcast Rice and Rutten are capable of doing. Rice was in Edmonton the night before doing an HDNet Fights card and was reportedly feeling under the weather during the DREAM broadcast. They should have let Ron Kruck handle the play by play in Canada so Rice would have been well rested for the all night broadcast.

In regard to the current season of “The Ultimate Fighter“:

The Ultimate Fighter has officially “jumped the shark”. As someone who would be labeled a hardcore if I weren’t involved in the sport, I don’t mind the fact that this season has been heavy on fights and light on the histrionics in the house. After all, I don’t know about you, but I can only see a group of guys suffering from cabin fever, get drunk and trash a house so many times! However with ratings continuing to drop, I agree with Bloody Elbow’s Luke Thomas that the next step should be to do the show live a la “Big Brother.”

Overall, I found it to be a strong debut for Ranallo. But you can decide for yourself by clicking here. Welcome to the blogosphere, Ranallo!

Mauro’s sometimes ridiculous, over the top style might come from the fact that he was previously a pro wrestling announcer. I remember watching him with Stampede Wrestling and thinking, man this Ranallo guy needs to switch to decaf.

Just an FYI – I’ve unfortunately been dealing with Ranallo for years. None of my fighters like him, Pride execs were on the verge of canning him, Elite XC, Strikeforce and TFN are pondering the same things. Ask Bas off the record, and see how much he likes Ranallo.

Just go to one afterparty with him and then post your thoughts. Once you get over the ‘awe’ factor, it is very evident the type of person he is.

He’s never done jack to me but I’ve been there dozens of times to see his act. I am shocked he is still in this industry.

Who are you? I think it’s only fair you post your real full name if you’re going to make such statements. Are you someone who is in the industry and have truly had one-on-one experiences with Ranallo? Or, are you just some random dude on the Internet making crap up?

And I have been to an after-party that Ranallo was at. He was a regular guy and he seemed to be getting along just fine with the fighters.

@#9 Vlad: That was some of that lamest FUD trash talk I’ve ever seen. You managed to spend three paragraphs dissing him and dropped promoters and personalities attesting that they dislike him but you haven’t even given us a hint of what he does. For all we know he’s just got bad BO or something, I remain unconvinced that he is a terrible announcer.

The only thing I can think of is a few times he’s dropped off-color comments (like about Gina Carano) but honestly that doesn’t really bother me.

Can’t stand this clown. He makes the Showtime stuff almost unwatchable. I especially hate it when Mauro throws out one of his MANY, MANY metaphors during an event. Good example: “He got dropped like a bag of groceries after Grandma slipped on the ice”. Um, what? Doofus.